Makom

That reminds me....if we don't beat West Ham, then Sunderland will finish above us even if they lose their remaining two games. And even if we draw against West Ham, they still have to lose those two games by a net 6 goals for us to finish above them. So there we have it - Carver & the team's motivation to win this game is not only to ensure our Premier League survival, but to ensure the natural order of football in the north east is maintained. So....it's a nailed on defeat.

If we beat them, and we beat them convincingly, with style and attacking football, then I think a pitch invasion demanding answers for they've been such useless cunts before today would be well in order. Maybe remind one or two of them why it's called the Gallowgate......for next season like.

Well, is it just me, or does the poll tally not match up with the consensus of the replies? Don't tell me there's a Shy Ashley effect at work here..... I think we need to know the names of the traitors. Or figure out how Fish is managing to vote multiple times.

Always amazes me that they were making WWII films as early as a year later. If they weren't acting in those, then they were sure as hell consulting.

You sure about that? The highest paid business executives make in a year what the highest paid footballers make in a month. The highest draw actors like Tom Cruise might earn more in a year than Ronaldo, but not much more, and certainly not for as little time at the coal face. I can't think of a single top musician or lawyer who would even come close.

Wow. That's a long read, only just finished it now. If even 10% of it is accurate, it's scary stuff. Basically a Trident trainee started to get concerns even before his first patrol, and by the time he'd finished it (3 months at sea) he says he'd seen enough to want to do a Snowden. It's all a bit rambling and badly constructed, but skip to the end to read the bits that explain his motivations and (imho unrealistic) expectations of what this leak will achieve. He did say he would hand himself in, but the BBC seems to think he's currently on the run. His concerns are wide ranging - lax security both on shore and in the boat, fast tracked training and staff shortages and potentially unstable crew members, crews not following proper procedures - both security and engineering safety wise, the boats have multiple maintenance issues including various fire risks, and basically a culture of taking short cuts due to cost/convenience, both by the crew and the higher ups. And perhaps most significantly strategic wise, the boat he was on couldn't even fire its missiles at the end of the tour even if it wanted to, due to the various technical issues it had. He is basically saying that it is only by sheer luck that we haven't lost a boat yet or had a serious loss of life due to an accident. Even worse, he makes a quite convincing argument that, in the environment today where terrorists are extremely committed, intelligent and not too worried about martyring themselves, we are at very real risk of one of them being able to turn one of these boats into a dirty bomb while docked in Faslane. To his credit he doesn't say anything stupid like claiming they could launch a missile, but he comes close to claiming they could even cause a misfire while at sea.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/265119365/The-Sec-ret-Nuc-lea-r-Th-re-At + =

Burnham now supports an EU referendum, this is apparently why he's the 'change' candidate. I don't think he's quite understood the fact this contest is going to be about what he would be supporting in 2020.....

I am frankly not optimistic that crowds will drop significantly after a good few years in the Championship. I think we could still be getting 40k+ if he appoints a half decent (but still Championship level) manager and the team plays some sort of attacking football. Only a sustained period of dross with us stinking up mid-table or lower would likely have any impact on the crowds, enough to impact the profits anyway.

Drivers are background checked for serious crimes according to the last BBC news story I read about it. So sorry Gemmill, you're just going to have to find another outlet for your rape fantasies. I'm not sure if you wanted to be the driver or passenger like....

When it comes to rejecting electoral reform, I'm firmly in the majority. Or have you forgotten the outcome of the AV referendum? Not to mention the fact that the parties who have always had PR on their manifestos have done consistently poor in the polls, even after a hung parliament which showed quite well the faults of FPTP - it's only UKIP & SNP whose support rocketed after that election, and it's pretty obvious that had nothing to do with a desire for electoral reform. It frankly doesn't take a genius to figure out where the leverage would have been on the numbers posted previously, when the goal is to form a majority and you have no other policy to offer UKIP except the one you were already going to do, a referendum. I have absolutely no idea what underpins your continuing belief that what I've said would have happened wouldn't have, but if you feel like calling me a tit is likely to open my eyes to your wisdom, so be it. I never said FPTP was sensible, I simply said it's better than PR at keeping out extremists and identifying the largest single party. By seeking to use the example of this election, I'm simply trying to get some expansion from the supporters of PR what they mean when they claim that their proposed system would be more democratic, beyond simplistic notions of fairness that have no real consequence regarding the Westminster system of government. While it might make people feel a little better if 4 million votes translated to more seats for a party like UKIP, according to you, the outcome would be exactly the same - the Tories in power - but with one minor difference, they would be a minority government rather than a small majority one. It could be argued that's a better reflection of the overall will of the people based on that result, but any attempt to claim it's fairer or more democratic to those 4 million UKIP voters would seem to be quite disingenous, since their ability to shape government policy in ways that go against the Tory manifesto would be no different than the outcome under FPTP. As ever, the supposed benefits of PR seem a bit airy fairy, and its supporters simply cannot come up with any practical examples where it makes a difference, at least not a significant one (I've been ignoring the issue of influence on sub-committees etc - but we will soon see from the SNP whether that's a significant factor in our system).

People can bang on about left wing ideology and try and unpick the narrative in a way that favours Labour all they want, they're dreaming if they think that is a realistic path top power for the party. CT is a clueless idiot most of the time, but he's bang on about just how little notice Mr & Mrs Swing voter take of macroeconomic arguments. As I said many pages ago, they need to win first, then worry about how to help the poor and disadvantaged.

Indeed, we'd need to stay down a good few years, well into the new TV contract, before Ashley probably started thinking he's better off out of it. I am now starting to worry even more about whether or not he could turn a regular, albeit smaller, profit in the Championship, and therefore just stay even longer, just to wind us up. Hopefully a few years in the Championship with Ashley still here would actually prompt some realistic protest action though.

It's no less of a windup than claiming that just because Austin put a shift in, there shouldn't be any change to the current model, where out of the trio of players, managers and directors, it's the players who suffer the least for performing poorly.

Thompers apparently.

I have fond memories of us winning nearly every game of the Championship btw, and quite enjoyed the experience of having a humble and thoroughly decent manager. And we had quite a few live games too iirc. I am not however letting that cloud my judgement this time round, as I think we simply got lucky with circumnstances, and perhaps that group of players thought they owed us something. This time round could be quite different. Still worth the risk though, just to get rid of Ashley.

do tell....

Well, the reaction of the media and pundits to Scholes' retirement was perfectly in proportion to his achievements/ability imho, but it's hard to compare that to Gerrard/Lampard because we will never really know what he could have brought to England. In the case of Gerrard/Lampard however, we know exactly what we're comparing, hence my bafflement at why Gerrard seems to be being lauded as the better player and indeed better man than Lampard.

This is the sort of thing I was say that earned me a ban from Newcastle-Online for being a mackem troll......but I'll keep saying it, because it's true. Pardew is not a good manager, and by rights has no business being anywhere near the job under ordinary circumnstances. But there are not normal conditions. Nobody can deny now, in the cold light of day and with many years experience behind us, that he was probably the best we could have hoped for under the conditions set down by Ashley - he wanted someone who was capable enough to get the players to perform, albeit inconsistently as it turns out, but wouldn't rock the boat by complaining about the ridiculous constraints he was expected to work under. In seeking to criticisie Pardew, a lot of people seemed to have quickly forgotten that under Ashley NUFC was being run so incompetently we'd recently been managed by Joe Kinnear, FFS, and been relegegated. A lot of people gave Pardew shit for towing the party line, but what was he supposed to do? How many managers would we have gone through by now if they all had the same principles as KK? And believe it or not, as it turned out, Pardew actually deserved credit for going against the regime and actually putting good sides out in Europe, even though he was the person who suffered most for doing that. The Sack Pardew campaign was ridiculously misguided, it was and still is obvious that Ashley was the problem, and that no manager could hope to succeed while he was in charge. One things for damn sure, Pardew quite clearly wouldn't have sent us down with this set of players at his disposal.

My emotional reaction up to now, fearing a Leeds/Sheff style decade in the wilderness even if it got rid of Ashley, has been no. But I've come around to yes, based on simple logic: 1. Best case scenario: we bumble along mid-table not trying in cups and selling our best players 2. Worst case scenario: we flirt with relegation until eventually getting relegated anyway 3. Fan apathy - the remaining match going fans clearly don't have the courage of their convictions to actually force Ashley out by simply not going 4. Ashley's cuntishness - it's been 8? years since he said he'd listened to us and was going to sell up. Assuming the money keeps rolling in, he's clearly going nowhere fast. People assuming he can be shamed or abused out, are frankly deluding themselves 5. Financial reality - relegation is the only event which is likely to have enough of an impact on Ashley's main interest in owning NUFC (significant profit) to force him to sell Therefore, the only logical conclusion can be that we must be relegated for things to change for the better. Ashely is obviously right that we can't compete with the likes of Man Utd, but 5th-8th and cup success is a perfectly reasonable goal for a club of our size and stature. That said, the nightmare scenario of course is that we get relegated yet we still turn a meagre profit, enough for Ashley to think it's worth keeping the club.

As if the people still going to the games had the courage of their convictions to boo for a whole 90 minutes in an effort to rid the club of Ashley. Don't make me laugh. But I see nothing remotely childish about booing for 90 mins, and it's certainly no less mature than waving red cards about. There's nothing at all mature about any of this really, at its heart it's just a bunch of people trying to get someone to sell something he owns because they don't like how he runs it. The mature approach would be to just stop going and stop funding Ashley, which is of course my chosen method. We all must choose our own path, so sayeth the people. If I had my way, every person attending the West Ham game would be tarred and feathered and have 'Judas' tattooed across their forehead. It's been obvious for a very long time that the people sustaining Ashley the most are the people happy to keep turning up to the ground and then doing nothing by way of expressing their displeasure except a little bit of pathetic booing once the idiots on the field and the touchline have predictably failed to perform.

I'm actually wondering if a little bias isn't creeping into the media/pundits based on how they perceive the clubs they played for, rather than the players in isolation.

Compare and contrast the reaction Lampard's departure from English football got, and the one Gerrard has got. It doesn't stack up for me. Trophies? Lampard pisses all over Stevie G in the trophy stakes obviously. Goals? Again, Lampard pisses all over Stevie G, both for club & country. He also beats Gerrard in the all time table for league assists. England record? Their records & achievements with England are obviously quite similar, with neither being regarded as really having replicated club form for country. But notably, Lampard scored more goals in fewer games. Skill / effort / sportsmanship? Hard to judge, both are obviously skilled players and put lots of effort in. But the comments heard today has reminded me of Gerrard's reputation as a horrible tackler. Not sure I remember the same criticism of Lampard. I also can't help noticing the there appears to have been a longer/greater drop off in skill/contribution from Gerrard in his later years, compared to Lampard. Not sure if Gerrard were to somehow sign for City next season he'd be as influential as Lampard was. Loyalty? Lampard stayed at Chelsea until such time as they offered him no contract, to play for Chelsea he would literally have had to play for nothing. Gerrard by contrast fucked off simply because they only offered him a 1 year deal. Neither can be called a one club man as both are off to the MLS, and it's pretty unrealistic to have expected Lampard to stay at West Ham throughout his career. Although they both retired from England in 2014, notably Lampard is two years older than Gerrard, so he's arguably been more loyal to the country. The only thing I could find to separate the two in a way that favoured Gerrard, was in individual accolades, and Gerrard only wins that because he has two World Footballer of the Year awards compared to Lampard's one. The love in from the LFC supporters was to be entirely expected I supposed, it's the difference between the plaudits Gerrard has received today from pundits and commentators for being such a great footballer and a great man, compared to what I remember for Lampard, is what's grating me. I just can't see how anyone can justify the difference, based on the above.

And just on a point of principle, to be left in a situation where we're relying on Hull in the last game to not be relegated, is just absolutely disgusting. This is the world of the mackem, not a club with our resources and support, even if we are now operating within tight financial restraints. This says it all as to how far down Ashley has dragged NUFC.

If fans can't appreciate that the risk/reward ratio was massively in our favour for this particular instance (once we were 1-0 up and Hull 1-0 down and against this particular team and how they were playing at the time), then they really are morons. Especially so since we were so ill equipped to score a 2nd. I wouldn't advocate it normally, but to never do it as a point of principle is just daft, as this game showed. We could very well go down because of it.